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James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

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Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#11

Post by Gobiner »

jacquesm wrote: post #5
jacksonh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosling's layoff concerns were probably more about his friends and the people that worked for him.

Yes, but if they treat him like this I can't see people lower on the totem pole being treated much better, I'd rather expect the opposite.

It's pretty easy to imagine that when Gosling was employed by Sun, he enjoyed significant power to shape his own job. Under Oracle, he clearly did not have the power to make his own job into what he wanted. It's not much of a stretch to believe that lower-tier technical staff didn't have that power to begin with, and hence did not feel the same sting of new management.

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#12

Post by jacquesm »

mseebach wrote: post #8
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if they treat him like this I can't see people lower on the totem pole being treated much better, I'd rather expect the opposite.

I think the implied trade-off is between "IBM axes former SUN-division Foo, 5000 fired" and "Stuck in an unpleasant, but decently paid, job with benefits and no particular obligation not to just pack up and leave when a better opportunity comes along."

Oracle has already fired close to 7,000 people of the original 27,000 that were part of the merger, in June they announced a further 1,000 people to be thrown out but at the same time said they would hire 2,000 new ones mostly for the sales division.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6536G820100604

I don't see how IBM could have done much worse, and I think that Java would have fared a lot better under IBM, which in the longer term would have probably meant more rather than less job security for the people working near Gosling.

If he was talking about the company as a whole IBM would have had to fire more than 8,000 people to date do be doing as bad for the employees as Oracle did, now of course we'll never know so we can't really make any statements about that but I find it hard to conceive of it being so bad. IBM is very image conscious and I think they would have had a hard time murdering the core team around java at this clip, let alone destroying the technical core of Sun and replacing it with 'sales'.

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#13

Post by jacquesm »

Gobiner wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if they treat him like this I can't see people lower on the totem pole being treated much better, I'd rather expect the opposite.

It's pretty easy to imagine that when Gosling was employed by Sun, he enjoyed significant power to shape his own job. Under Oracle, he clearly did not have the power to make his own job into what he wanted. It's not much of a stretch to believe that lower-tier technical staff didn't have that power to begin with, and hence did not feel the same sting of new management.

Yes, that's probably very true, in part this is Gosling being a similar sized fish in a much larger pond.

But if I compare that to google where there are lots of 'names' from just about every era of computing working and being reasonably happy I can't help but notice the contrast.

That changes the atmosphere of the place and that definitely does filter down to lower levels.

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#14

Post by hopeless »

Oracle sounds as bad a company internally as externally. I'm hugely grateful that I've found other languages, frameworks and databases to base my career on and minimise Oracle's involvement in my life.

Although I never worked for them, I loved the hardware and software output from Sun. It was good to have them in the tech ecosystem. I can't say the same about Oracle.

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#15

Post by ajaxian »

paulbaumgart wrote: post #7

A lot of big software companies seem to put significant effort into maintaining a good relationship with the developer/technical community, presumably in large part to keep the recruitment pipeline (especially of top people) flowing along. Oracle, by contrast, doesn't seem to give a shit and gets away with it[1]. Why? [1] http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...

It probably doesn't matter much to Oracle to stay on good terms w/ the technical community since technical people aren't their customers.

The people who have the budgetary authority to buy Oracle's very expensive products very likely haven't been doing anything technical for many years, if they ever did. Programmers in organizations that use Oracle aren't asked if they want to use Oracle, they're told they're going to use Oracle...

Unless you get your kicks from working on a 30-year-old database written in 80's style C, I don't think there's much appeal to working for Oracle as a programmer.

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#16

Post by gamble »

jacquesm wrote: post #12
mseebach wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implied trade-off is between "IBM axes former SUN-division Foo, 5000 fired" and "Stuck in an unpleasant, but decently paid, job with benefits and no particular obligation not to just pack up and leave when a better opportunity comes along."

Oracle has already fired close to 7,000 people of the original 27,000 that were part of the merger, in June they announced a further 1,000 people to be thrown out but at the same time said they would hire 2,000 new ones mostly for the sales division. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6536G820100604 I don't see how IBM could have done much worse, and I think that Java would have fared a lot better under IBM, which…

IBM has a policy of shipping as many jobs overseas as can be managed. They've moved tens of thousands in the last decade. What I've heard from friends suggests that it's not a pleasant environment for rank-and-file employees. AFAIK, Oracle doesn't have the same zest for shipping jobs overseas.

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#17

Post by mhd »

_delirium wrote: post #10
paulbaumgart wrote: post #7

A lot of big software companies seem to put significant effort into maintaining a good relationship with the developer/technical community, presumably in large part to keep the recruitment pipeline (especially of top people) flowing along. Oracle, by contrast, doesn't seem to give a shit and gets away with it[1]. Why? [1] http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...

I don't know much about this sector, but how does Oracle compare to its direct competitors? E.g. is SAP friendlier with the developer/technical community?

IBM with its DB2 product is a direct competitor, and seems to do a bit better, blue suits & company hymns notwithstanding.

SAP is a special case, as it has a more limited target audience. The financial environment has a heavy, erm, taint on the typical SAP developer. Most of them are in it for the money, so I don't think a lot of them care all that much. College students in Germany often joke about selling your soul to become a SAP consultant… Whereas most Oracle developers or DBAs I've met are still more engineers than business types.

Some companies just don't need a flourishing developer community. I think Oracle – especially after buying Sun – isn't one where this would seem advisable, but apparently they think different. Wonder how that will work out…

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#18

Post by jrockway »

yellowbkpk wrote: post #9
davidw wrote: post #3

Some quotes: > Oracle did not have a notion of a senior engineer or at least one equivalent to Gosling’s grade at Sun, where he was a fellow. “In my job offer, they had me at a fairly significant grade level down,” he said. Says something about how they value technical people. > The word came down that Oracle does not do employee appreciation events. So she forced the thing to be cancelled. But they didn’t save any m…

One of the reasons I left GE was because there was no notion of a senior engineer in the software field (there are senior science positions in the research divisions). To go beyond "Software Engineer" you had to step into a managerial role and away from doing any software engineering. This burned out several people (including myself). You can only wait for the implementation of "Technical Career Path" for so long.

I can kind of see this for GE, because it isn't a software company. But Oracle does nothing but make software -- programmers are the absolute most important people on their projects.

Oh yeah, I forgot. Oracle is a marketing company. If you want a nice database, use Postgres. If you want a database that sponsors a sailboat, buy Oracle.

Re: James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle

#19

Post by noodle »

paulbaumgart wrote: post #7

A lot of big software companies seem to put significant effort into maintaining a good relationship with the developer/technical community, presumably in large part to keep the recruitment pipeline (especially of top people) flowing along. Oracle, by contrast, doesn't seem to give a shit and gets away with it[1]. Why? [1] http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...

as has been stated before in other threads in this topic, the decision to use oracle products is rarely a technical one. its a business one, made by business/managerial types. and so that is who oracle plays to. if you build a product that treats the client's developers as interchangeable incidentals, you're going to do the same to your own developers.
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